Considering that throughout the entire referendum campaign the Irish border hardly figured at all, despite dire warnings from Blair, Major and Ahern, it turned out to be the biggest sticking point in the first round of negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement. It is now shaping up to be the basis for a major confrontation between the UK and the EU. Brussels is becoming increasingly irritated by the way Brexit Johnson is interpreting the NI protocol. A meeting took place on Tuesday at Stormont where a House of Lords Committee heard evidence from very unhappy stakeholders. Tony Connelly at Irish state broadcaster RTE reports on in in a long article: The deepening stand-off over the Irish protocol
It makes depressing reading. The committee heard from hauliers, Belfast harbour commissioners, Stena line and others about the startling absence of information from government on how they should prepare. Nobody has any idea what will happen in January 2021.
Les Stracey, Director of Corporate Affairs at Stenaline had the most amazing story. Ferries from GB to Belfast carry a lot of unaccompanied trailers, the loads having different tractor units and drivers at each end. Stenaline will be held responsible for the appropriate paperwork.
"If there are 100 consignments in the back of that trailer," he told the committee, "we need to know all the details for every single consignment we have to collect in our system to be able to pass it on through the safety and security declaration. That is a nonsense. We are being asked to collect data which we don't have."
Les Stracey, Director of Corporate Affairs at Stenaline had the most amazing story. Ferries from GB to Belfast carry a lot of unaccompanied trailers, the loads having different tractor units and drivers at each end. Stenaline will be held responsible for the appropriate paperwork.
"If there are 100 consignments in the back of that trailer," he told the committee, "we need to know all the details for every single consignment we have to collect in our system to be able to pass it on through the safety and security declaration. That is a nonsense. We are being asked to collect data which we don't have."
Last Tuesday's Stormont meeting followed a visit by delegates from the EU Commission on February 11th to learn how much stakeholders understood of what the EU expect them to do under the terms of the protocol. Apparently, stakeholders were expecting that the EU would allow some 'flexibility' but were shocked to hear the protocol was now 'law' and must be applied in full.
The mixed messages being put out by Gove, Johnson and even Brandon Lewis are not helping. This was raised in Brussels on 17th February between David Frost the UK's chief negotiator and Michel Barnier's deputy Clara Martinez Alberola. Frost was asked what Boris Johnson and Brandon Lewis meant when they said there would be no checks on goods going between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and that there would be "no border" down the Irish Sea.
"It is understood that Mr Frost repeated the mantra UK officials have been using that 'we will uphold our legal obligations'. The EU side was nonplussed."
This is the formula Gove stuck by in The House last week - before again repeating there would be 'unfettered access'. Confused? You will be.
Yesterday, during an event held in London at the Institute for Government, politicians and trade experts heard another tale of the huge problems rapidly coming down the track. The Guardian report on it HERE.
"Stephen Farry, the MP for North Down and deputy leader of the Alliance party, said it was a fiction to think that a wide-ranging free-trade agreement with the EU would wash the checks away.
"'There is this wishful thinking that a free trade agreement is going to fully eliminate the need for some degree of checks. Even the most far reaching deal you can imagine isn’t going to fully address that,' he said.
At prime minister's questions in parliament yesterday, Jeffrey Donaldson of the DUP in a bit of masterly understatement said the PM "will be aware of continuing concerns in Northern Ireland among business about the Northern Ireland protocol" and asked if he would meet a cross-party delegation including business representatives "to discuss his commitment to maintain unfettered access to the UK market for Northern Ireland business?"
The PM answered:
"I have no difficulty at all making such an undertaking, because it is very clear from the protocol that unfettered access for Northern Ireland will continue."
There are indeed two references to the word 'unfettered' in the WA. First on page 293 in the introduction to the Irish protocol and again in Article 6 (1). Both refer specifically to goods "moving from Northern Ireland to the rest of the United Kingdom's internal market". All of the stakeholders' concerns are about goods moving the other way and on this score the protocol is clear. Article 13(1) says Regulation (EU) No 952/2013 (the Union Customs Code) shall apply in NI 'notwithstanding any other provisions of this protocol'.
Johnson may soon discover what he has signed up to.
Business is deeply frustrated at the ignorance in government about the impact on them of what has been agreed. There is a mood of trepidation in the province that it is on its way to a catastrophe brought about because Johnson simply has no idea what is in the Irish protocol. The EU side are cynical about Johnson and Gove and believe they are perfectly well aware of what was settled last year.
We are less than ten months from the end of the transition period and the companies who will need to implement the NI protocol, together with those likely to be impacted still have no idea what they're supposed to be doing.
I posted yesterday about there being no planning applications going in. Reading Tony Connelly's report you can see why. They don't even know what is needed yet. And we should not overlook the fact that similar checks and paperwork will apply to all EU points of entry from 1st January next year. It is not just a northern Ireland problem.
There is a developing pattern here. As each group become aware of the yawning chasm between what they were sold in 21016 and the detailed and practical reality of Brexit in 2021, the disillusionment sets in. Out of the WA came citizen's rights and the NI protocol. First, we know the three million EU and EEA citizens are desperately unhappy about the way it is all being implemented. I know this at first hand from two EU27 nationals who are members of our Selby for Europe group. It is a worrying experience.
Now NI business are despondent about the future as set out in the NI protocol, even among the DUP who supported Brexit. Next it will be the fishermen and farmers.
Those who expected Brexit to bring about a fall in immigration would have been disappointed with figures out this week showing non-EU immigration reached the highest figure since records began. They won't be happy.
An article in The Guardian about Priti Patel touches on the wider problem of a government which has only a sketchy idea of what it's doing but is in a great hurry to do it, bullying civil servants who are trying to deliver the impossible.
You don't need to be a genius to see who is going to be in line for the blame when it all goes wrong. The civil service know they will carry the can.
In a sign that the walls are finally closing in on Brexit Johnson, the Scottish government's Constitutional Affairs Secretary, Mike Russel, issued a strong statement in Holyrood yesterday:
"We reject the published mandate as it is. We will make clear that the UK Government, if it attempts to speak on matters that are devolved, does not speak for us."
Adding: “The Scottish Government does not believe that Boris Johnson has any mandate, in any part of the UK, for a form of Brexit which was regarded as being on the lunatic fringe of politics, even during the June 2016 referendum. That form of Brexit, which the UK now regards as optimum, is a Canada-minus deal, the most basic of free trade agreements.
"Undoubtedly this will mean new barriers and borders, trade inhibiting rules of origin, customs difficulties and heavy regulatory requirements."
As we all knew, Brexit is starting to go very wrong.
